Baroness Jenkin of Kennington said the Tories needed to consider “all the options” and could not be seen to be ignoring “50 per cent of the talent” when selecting prospective MPs.

She acknowledged that the idea was likely to trigger anger in Tory associations opposed to the shortlists but said they may be necessary to prevent the number of female MPs falling again.

Baroness Jenkin’s appeal, in the London Evening Standard, was made after Ed Miliband last week highlighted how there was not a single woman on the Coalition front bench at Prime Minister’s Questions.

The women of Westminster have had enough Telegraph.co.uk Are the women of Whitehall and Westminster so hacked off with our degraded way of doing politics that they are finally going to force some revolutionary changes? I’ve never known so many senior women so dismayed by the one-upmanship games of male politicians.

“How can we entice more women to stand for Parliament when we have this unprofessional image of a childish, old-fashioned boys’ club with hectoring and bullying that would never be tolerated in a boardroom or classroom?” asks the Tory MP Mary Macleod, who is chairing an all-party inquiry into why so many women are quitting politics.

Labour’s Dame Tessa Jowell is equally fierce. “What we are seeing is a big wake-up call for politics, its conventions and its behaviour,” she says. Meanwhile, Dame Helen Ghosh, former top official at the Home Office and now director general of the National Trust, told a seminar at the Institute for Government that she had sometimes felt “ground down” when working for ministers who “took decisions for the wrong reasons – such as pleasing the Daily Mail”.

Lord Rennard is threatening to start legal action in the High Court against the party by the end of Thursday if his suspension is not lifted. But Mr Clegg said his position had not changed – and he repeated his call for Lord Rennard to apologise for any distress caused to the women.

Lord Rennard denies claims of harassment by four female activists.

He was asked to apologise after the party said an internal party investigation concluded the claims against him were credible but could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Speaking to Telegraph Wonder Women at a Telefonica and Wayra event supporting female entrepreneurs on Tuesday night, he said the lack of women in parliament, in the Bank of England and in boardrooms was “dispiriting.”

The man once described as a British Barak Obama dismissed suggestions from critics that promoting women into boardrooms purely because they are women is tokenistic and ignoring a quality of “merit.”

“Are you seriously saying the reason in 2014 we don’t see women in business or leadership positions in parliament, or on our boards, [is because they] don’t merit promotion?

Theresa May, Maria Miller and Justine Greening are in prime positions for the cameras, with Theresa Villiers and Anne Milton taking up the extra seats. Could it be that all five women had received a three-line whip from 10 Downing Street urging their presence?

The oestrogen-loaded bench means that Mr Cameron has avoided another pressing question from Ed Miliband on his so-called “women problem”. For now. But the fact he’s seemingly had to request their presence to stave off another attack from Labour just says it all.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, used Theresa May’s absence from PMQs last week to mock the Prime Minister for his “all-male front bench” and the increasing numbers of Conservative MPs leaving parliament.

In stark contrast this week the Prime Minister’s frontbench included five female ministers Theresa May, Justine Greening, Anne Milton, Maria Miller and Theresa Villiers and as well as Conservative whip Claire Perry.

Directly behind Mr Cameron four further female MPs were sat in clear view of the cameras. Behind those, another three female MPs can be seen.

Published by psawomenpolitics

The UK Political Studies Association Women and Politics Specialist Group. Resource for researchers working on women and/or gender and for women in the PSA. The 2014 Specialist Group of the Year.
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